Pseudospin Hall effect of light in photonic crystals with Weyl points (1704.00305v1)

Abstract: The study of spin-orbit coupling of photons has attracted much attention in recent years, and leads to many potential applications in optics. In the recently discovered metamaterial -- photonic crystals with Weyl points, the pseudospin-orbit coupling of photons bears a resemblance to the spin-orbit coupling. We study the pseudospin Hall effect of light in such metamaterials and find that during total reflection, the light beam experiences a transverse shift that is proportional to the pseudospin (or the monopole charge) of the Weyl point. As the spin Hall effect has inspired many works to explore the applications in optics, exploring the coupling between the orbital and pseudospin degrees of freedom of photons can also be fruitful in the field of optics, as well as in other fields where Weyl points can be realized.